Local lawmaker reaction after Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced that he would vote “no” on the Build Back Better plan.

The bombshell statement from Manchin happened Fox News Sunday on Sunday, Dec. 19.

Republican Representative Fred Upton from Southwest Michigan issued a statement praising Manchin.

His full statement is below:

“Senator Manchin was an integral part in writing the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill (BIF), which overwhelmingly passed the Senate in August 69-30 and then the House in November.

From the start, he and the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus met at length to work on a proper framework addressing true infrastructure needs such as highways, roads, bridges, water, broadband, and energy infrastructure as well as a way to pay for it without raising taxes or adding to the deficit or debt unlike the Trump or Biden COVID relief packages.

We knew that we simply could not kick the can down the road and do nothing to fix our crumbling infrastructure past another election or two, but instead prioritize what we could do now in a bipartisan way – actually governing in this gridlocked Congress.

Attempting to add trillions in new social spending that would never go away was never going to attract Republican support and Senator Manchin’s realization of such now ends this long chapter with inflation concerns near the top of the list.

Successfully unhooking the BBB from the BIF allowed us to truly focus on what this country really needed versus more unchecked inflationary spending.”